Something pleasurably and perplexingly perplexing visited us recently all the way from Anambra State. Perhaps I should re-phrase the opening sentence. October 1st mood of pleasure was pleasurably released in Anambra State when Governor Chukwuma Soludo, a solid Professor of Economics, cast a keen enchantment over Anambrarians of impeccable bookmen-and-women by naming an international airport after the one and only Chinua Achebe who left for the great beyond more than ten years ago.
Every person of a keen sensibility – like me – cannot but yield himself over to the thrill with thrilling delight that Governor Soludo has imbued my honey-scented enchantment with.
As a matter of fact, when the news of the re-naming of the Anambra Cargo Airport, Umueri, after Chinua Achebe came to me, I thought I was half-dreaming or even full-dreaming. When have our politicians and any of our country’s political leaders given a well-deserved recognition to a scholar or writer in our clime (as we have just witnessed)?
But the Governor Soludo Independence Declaration on the anniversary of our 63rd independence anniversary has since become a declaration that is full of perplexity, freshness of the air beyond the morning light of Anambra to the measured substance of the grace of our country’s landscape longing for the intoxication which art and the products of art straightforwardly want us to cherish at this time of our political experience.
In giving the recognition that he has given to Chinua Achebe Governor Soludo is telling us and, in fact, has told us, that art, specifically literature, is most characteristically and explicitly the something Nigerians need now to re-invent themselves and re-carve and re-shape their collective destiny. Chinua Achebe is the embodiment, the absolute embodiment, of this portrait, so to say, that Governor Soludo the high-brow economist portrays and paints before our very eyes in sparse but invigorating politico-economic terms. Only the deep can treat the deep deeply.
The splendidly artistic economist has given us a picture of mind’s eye where there is something strikingly original and compellingly compelling. He has done something as deep, as thoughtful, as subtle, as powerful, overwhelming, delightful and originally original by giving to Achebe and to literature what he has given them. Literature has economic or, better, politico-economic value in Nigeria after all! No head of government at any level in this country, your country my country our country has done what Governor Chukwuma Soludo has done. I eagerly wait to be corrected.
Achebe was a first class writer – novelist, short story writer, poet, essayist and critic – significantly well-known over the globe. His books, especially his novels and short stories, were products of splendidly revolutionary ideas, revolutionary ideas of splendid, gleaming pictures which matched his splendid, imposing reputation. His books’ splendid colours resulted from the splendorous artistic effect, from splendorous pictorial ideas even when he treated the same subject several times over in different lights and perspectives.
He was a universal writer whose ambition resolved to be peculiarly peculiar, and whose precedent was its own precedent which endeavoured to resemble or imitate or follow nothing other than itself even when readers from other climes outside Africa were tempted to liken the experiences and pains of his characters to their own. For example, I can readily recall that I read somewhere a pretty long time ago, a prettily beautiful long time ago, that an Asian reader, a girl, after reading. Achebe’s painting of Okonkwo of Things Fall Apart exclaimed as follows: “This is my father!”
His Things Fall Apart is listed among the best 100 novels the world has seen. And the novel is not towards or in the rear of the one hundred listed novels. In other words, the novel is not rear-wards. And it is the only African novel to be so placed in the magnificent list. Again, I eagerly wait to be corrected.
I met Chinua Achebe six times when he was on this side of the great divide in several cities: Benin-City (twice); Calabar; Nsukka; Ogidi; and Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.A. Our meeting on each occasion was at a literary event – national and international.
On each occasion he was always the subject of appeal; a man of undiluted genius whose life or existence was coincident in range, time and scope with the picture or story of mankind. In my mind he, rightly or wrongly, coalesced with Flaubert and Balzac (1799-1850) and Gustave Flaubert (1821-80), two greatly immortal French novelists. Achebe and these two immortally immortal novelists share the same true-to-life reality. He had a glorious finish literary quality-wise with these two unforgettably immortal carvers of the novel.
Throughout his life Chinua Achebe was a man of courage. He always expressed his mind and feelings on matters and subjects dear to him. He was never a pretender. On two occasions he rejected our national honours because he never liked the way, the manner and style Nigeria was being governed. His rejection of Nigeria’s medals of honour was a mark of his blunt refusal to be compromised, a blunt refusal of his integrity to be compromised by our country’s thoughtlessly unpatriotic politicians.
He similarly resigned his membership of the Peoples Redemption Party (PRP), founded and led by the late Alhaji Aminu Kano in the Second Republic when he felt that certain happenings in the party were scoundrelly against his principle and integrity. He never joined any political party thereafter until he inhaled his last air.
I wonder time after time what would be his reaction today to the bad names we see every now and then in the politics of our landscape from the South East to the South-South and South West and thence to everywhere in the North (North West, North East, North Central) and Middle Belt. His voice would have been respectfully respected and weightily so especially in the South East where the healthy laws of feeling and of flesh and blood seemingly no longer exist in the eyes of the young, able bodied men called youths of Igbo land. How true this is! I may be wrong. But I am not wrong. And I am really not wrong.
Everything I have given my tongue to today lands in my shore of enlightenment thus: My charming thanks to the Muse that inspired and instigated Professor Chukwuma Soludo and his team and acolytes to re-name the Cargo Airport at Umueri after our immortally immortal genius called Chinua Achebe.
It is my wish to land at Chinua Achebe International Airport in one of my journeys from across the Atlantic in the nearest future. From there I will journey to my other bases in Nigeria your Nigeria my Nigeria our Nigeria. I hope that the current national officers of the Association of Nigerian Authors (ANA), the Literary Society of Nigeria (LSN) and the Nigerian Academy of Letters (NAL) will do their respective letters of gratitude to Professor Chukwuma Soludo, the governor of Anambra State, for his gesture of tremendous literary and scholastic value to these bodies of gentlemen and ladies of letters by his immortalising Chinua Achebe.
Maybe I should go further to request the national officers of the Association of Nigerian Authors, the writers’ body Achebe, our supreme gentleman of letters and one of our pre-eminent ones, founded and was president of for many years, to pay a scheduled visit to the Anambra State governor as a follow-up to the suggested letter of gratitude to him and his cabinet. Moreover, may I suggest that ANA should organise a symbolic day of literary readings at the Chinua Achebe International Airport in the not distant future to writerlize memorably the Chinua Achebe International Airport that will sooner or later be one of our country’s leading international airports?
And it won’t be a pretty bad idea to invite President Olusegun Obasanjo, a Distinguished Fellow of ANA and Professor Soludo’s former bossy boss, to partake in the envisaged reading event. I hope I have not spoken out of tune. In any case, in talking rightly about Chinua Achebe nothing can be out of tune and out of tone. Afejuku can be reached via 08055213059.
Source: The Guardian
